African-American voters crucial in race for mayor

Big turnout likely even with whites leading ballot

Jul. 31, 2013

Mayor Mark Mallory used the black vote to defeat Brad Wenstrup in the 2009 mayoral election. Even though he's no longer a candidate, Mallory will likely have a big influence on this year's race. / Enquirer file photo/Jeff Swinger

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Experienced reporters Jane Prendergast, Sharon Coolidge, Cindi Andrews, Jason Williams, James Pilcher and others will do the work so you have what you need to vote in Cincinnati’s city elections this November: • The Basics: All the news the candidates make. • The Background: Candidates’ backgrounds and where they stand on the issues. • The Truth: We will fact-check and truth squad what the candidates say, and do in-depth watchdog reporting and investigations. • The Choice: Attend and watch our candidate forums and debates and use our interactive tools online to help you decide. Always let us know what you need. Contact one of the reporters or political editor Carl Weiser at cweiser@enquirer.com.

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Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory generated excitement among black voters during the past two mayoral elections, and before him popular television anchor Courtis Fuller played that role.

Even without a serious black candidate at the top of the ticket this November, though, political experts and informed onlookers expect the city’s black vote to show up strong and, ultimately, to decide the election.

“African-American votes are where this race will be won or lost,” said Hamilton County Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou.

As Cincinnati prepares for a mayoral primary Sept. 10 – early primary voting will begin Tuesday – the candidates themselves don’t disagree on the pivotal role of black voters, with top contenders John Cranley and Roxanne Qualls working to earn support. Other candidates include Libertarian Jim Berns and Sandra Queen Noble, who is African-American and has run for president, Congress, mayor and city council; she finished last among 22 candidates in the 2011 City Council race.

Qualls said that, even though the race lacks a formidable black mayoral candidate, she doesn’t anticipate a drop-off in voting among African-Americans because City Council members are being elected at the same time.

Coming off a council session in which African-Americans held a racial majority, a Cincinnati first, as many as a third of the council candidates this year are black, with all five incumbents in the race.

“The black vote is not homogenous, but it does tend to be a significant voting block,” Qualls said.

Cranley said he’s reaching out to the black community because the current administration has failed it.

“The city is roughly 50-50 white and black, so it is essential that all of our citizens feel ownership of their city,” said Cranley. (The 2010 census found the city is actually 44.8 percent black, though it’s 50.7 percent minority.)

The consensus issue among African-Americans, say community leaders ranging from black-church ministers to social service agency heads, is the economy – job creation, income disparity and unemployment.

Even as the national overall unemployment rate remained even from May to June at 7.6, it ticked up from 13.5 to 13.7 percent nationally for African-Americans. The economic gap is as wide or even wider in Greater Cincinnati, where in the 15-county region in 2010 median household income for blacks was $29,705 compared with $55,227 for whites.

“The top issue is economics,” said Jim Clingman, who is serving as interim president of the 2,500-member Cincinnati NAACP branch because President Christopher Smitherman is running for council re-election. National bylaws prevent Smitherman from holding the office while campaigning.

Both candidates have plans for addressing employment.

Cranley’s would pay for job training for 600 people and create 379 full-time jobs.

Poverty cuts deep in many black communities. In Avondale, for example, an estimated 49 percent of people 20-24 are unemployed, and throughout the neighborhood 40 percent of the people do not have access to a vehicle, compared to a citywide rate of 22 percent.

WHAT PAST ELECTIONS MIGHT FORETELL FOR THIS ONE

Cranley and Qualls ran against each other once before.

In 2007 – the only time Cranley and Qualls were together on a council ballot – Cranley outperformed Qualls by more than 200 votes in Ward 7. Covering much of Bond Hill and Roselawn, Ward 7 is widely considered the African-American bellwether. Qualls, who will hold a campaign event tonight in Bond Hill, at Allen Temple AME Church, had slight edges in 2007 in some other predominantly black wards: 3 (Evanston), 13 (Avondale/North Avondale) and 14 (Kennedy Heights/Pleasant Ridge).

In 2009, when Qualls was a council candidate, she ended up getting more votes than Mallory got in his head-to-head contest with Republican Brad Wenstrup – 41,290 for Qualls, 36,444 for Mallory.

In earning more votes than any of the 18 other council candidates in 2009, Qualls did better in the African-American community than any of the black candidates. In predominantly black precincts, she won 66 percent of the vote, while taking 54 percent in predominantly white precincts. Cecil Thomas, an African-American who resigned his council seat earlier this year, took 64 percent in the mostly black precincts.

“The African-American community knows the power of its vote,” said Thomas, managing the council campaign of his wife, Pamula Thomas. “The energy of the Obama years, 2008 and 2012, is still there.”

But, said Laketa Cole, a former Cincinnati councilwoman and recording secretary of the Bond Hill Community Council, “all politics is local, and it is my hope we get out the vote for the primary.”

Black churches and social service agencies will make sure their constituencies vote. At the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati, president and CEO Donna Jones Baker said her agency will sponsor a candidates’ forum, issue position papers on issues such as job creation and encourage registered voters to get to the polls.

“The black community sees that things are getting better, but we’re being left behind economically,” Baker said.

The pulpit is power in black neighborhoods. As pastor of 1,900-member Corinthian Baptist Church in Avondale, the Rev. K.Z. Smith will encourage churchgoers to be informed voters. And he said he is encouraged that Cranley and Qualls both appear sincere in their interest in the well-being of Cincinnati’s black citizens and commitment to redevelop neighborhoods.

Smith is concerned about what happens to returning citizens, the people released from Ohio prisons who come home to Cincinnati neighborhoods. Each year, 2,100 ex-offenders are released from Ohio prisons return home to Hamilton County alone. The county also has 5,000 felony probationers, criminals convicted of serious crimes but sentenced to probation instead of prison; 202 live in the 45229 area code, which covers most of Avondale.

MALLORY'S WORD CARRIES 'SIGNIFICANT WEIGHT'

The two biggest issues: privatizing parking and building a streetcar. Qualls supports both; Cranley has built his campaign around opposing them.

“I do think John Cranley will be very attractive to African-American voters because they share his views on those issues,” Republican leader Triantafilou said.

It’s been a dozen years since the top of the city ticket has been without a black candidate.

And, of course, Mallory defeated his white opponents in the last two elections.

“There’s no question that support from African-American community pushed Mark Mallory over the top,” said Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke.

Burke sees both candidates courting the black vote. And both have support from prominent local black leaders.

Council members Charlie Winburn and Smitherman support Cranley, as does former mayor and councilman Dwight Tillery. But Qualls has Mallory and Councilman Wendell Young’s votes.

Gene Beaupre, a Xavier University political science professor, put a geographic analysis on his reasoning that African-American voters could decide who the next mayor is.

“If you were simplifying the race, you would give more votes on the West Side to John and more to Roxanne on the East Side,” Beaupre said. “So it could easily come down to black voters.”

He anticipates both candidates will be out in the African-American community, “running a door-to-door, church-to-church, barber-shop-to-barber-shop campaign.”

“They have to establish themselves on a personal level and motivate these voters,” Beaupre said. “Black voters are not going to care about commercials, they will care about candidates they have a relationship with.” ⬛